Ethereal Effect
by Barrour
Summary: It seems that all hope is lost for the mankind, XCOM has been wiped out, human rebellion is being crushed and majority of Ethereals are already transferring their consciousnesses into the new Avatar bodies. Only Commander knows that with defeat, humanity has bought itself a chance to endure the storm that is sure to come. And for the sake of humanity, no sacrifice is too great.


**A/N: Wild idea that came into my mind after my squad was wiped out during the last mission in XCOM-2 heavily influenced by Vantage77's "** **XCOM- Humanity Rising** **". I plan it to be Mass Effect/XCOM crossover, but migh just leave it as XCOM two-shot fanfic.**

 **Spoiler Alert: Mostly based on the XCOM2 last mission -"Operation Leviathan", Ethereals' lines from it and my own interpretation of them. I may have messed up the timeline and order of events from EW, I'm a bit rusty on that front, plus, the timeline is twisted anyway, since XCOM lost and all that.**

 **I do not own XCOM-2, XCOM- Enemy Unknown or Enemy Within.**

* * *

 **Avenger, 3 minutes after the failed 'Operation Leviathan'.**

 _He should have known better_ , Central Officer Bradford mused while trying not to catch a MAG round with his skull, after all his current situation perfectly mirrored the events from 20 years ago, to the point that he was half-expecting for someone from XCOM staff to hit him with the fire extinguisher. Yet again they relied on the technology they did not truly understand and yet again it resulted in their headquarters turning into a brutal battlefield. Being suppressed by the enemy fire and lacking ammo, Bradford found that he could do nothing, but try to piece together alien intentions and actions by comparing his current situation and events from the Invasion of 2015.

Back then Commander _(name and all other personal data classified)_ has already proven himself to be XCOM's greatest weapon, his tactical and strategical genius was the primary reason XCOM could keep the alien incursions at bay and cull the Illuminati-like paramilitary group EXALT, at the same time.

Quick adoption of Elerium, energy weapons, power armour and research on the Hyperwave Beacon led Bradford to believe that XCOM could turn all of the enemy's technology against the aliens and save civilization.

 _He should have known better._

As soon as they connected the damn Beacon, Ethereals picked up XCOM HQ's location, parked one of their warships right on top of it, used greatest mind-control attack recorded on the XCOM personnel and sent wave after wave of their servants to overwhelm the base and capture the Commander. With one raid, Invaders shattered XCOM just like they themselves shattered EXALT week earlier.

Not long after XCOM Base has fallen, Ethereals launched full-fledged campaign of conquest against more weakened human nations, easily countering human militaries' advantage of numbers with smart use of terrain and orbital bombardment, technological and tactical superiority. Somewhere within the week after the beginning of the campaign several countries have already lost all of their military forces and were sending diplomats (many of whom, unsurprisingly, were wearing orange ties and had incredibly familiar skin discoloration) to the Ethereals to sign capitulation.

There were many theories about aliens' sudden change from small scale abductions performed by what can only be described as scout parties of token force to the invasion by a well organised military contingent. Majority of officers inclined to the idea that the enemy was merely evaluating the humanity's defenses and neutralizing primary threats.

Only two decades later Bradford had all the pieces of that puzzle in his hands: yes, the aliens were evaluating humanity and were identifying priority targets, just not in the way any military usually would, Ethereals were primarily interested in mankind's psionic potential and only after several of their scouts were wiped out they decided to test other capabilities too. It seems, Elders were impressed, impressed to the point that they decided to hold off the invasion until they could capture the Commander and hook him into their psionic network to use his strategical and tactical expertise as their greatest asset.

And what did Bradford and co. do 20 years later? Ah, yes, they basically combined two most important things aliens ever needed from humanity and handed them to the Elders on a silver platter. They believed that by using Ethereals' most mysterious powers against them, humanity would have a chance to stop that horrible, genocidal Avatar Project and take a shot at retaking the Earth.

Sure, expect a person that was already inslaved for two decades, to beat Ethereals, beings that already had enormous psionic powers and millennia of experience using those powers and now acquired even more powerful bodies, using psionics.

 _Yet again, he should have known better._

As soon as the squad came into the contact with Avatars, all three of them used some sort of psionic attack on Commander, making his Avatar to freeze on the spot and Commander's brain actvity to skyrocket, while the bulk of their bodyguards were enganing the outnumbered XCOM squad thus turning already desperate, near-suicidal attemp to do **something** into a complete defeat.

Minutes later, massive mind-control attack was released form Commander's real body, subjugating or neuralizing the weak-willed staff of the Avenger. Majority of weak-willed XCOM members appeared to be pilots, engineers and scientists, combatants were already trained in resisting mind control, to a degree at least, and Bradford himself was wearing mind-shield at all times. Not that it mattered anyway, since seconds later Elders' Elite guard started pouring out of the Psionic Gate, led by the Commander's Avatar itself.

 _I always knew that we would be defeated in the end._ Yes, he knew, odds were too great, the enemy was always far too powerful, far too good at concealing their true intentions and nature. _But it was foreign to human nature to rationally accept the defeat, without attemping everything they could._

As a last spit into the enemy's face Bradford shot the Commander's real body, trying to deny the enemy such an asset and probably to spare the Commander from even more decades of enslavement by the Elders. From the way commander's body and Avatar just started glowing with psionic power, it did not work.

Last thing Bradford saw was psionic lance being launched towards him.

* * *

 **Alien underwater base, 30 minutes earlier.**

"You will find our forces here loyal. They require no coercion, for they know failure here means the end for all" – Ethereal with female-like voice echoed all over the facility.

 _All that you've built_ Commander added internally, so far the assault on alien hideout **located on the bottom of the Ocean of all things** was going smoothly, whatever ADVENT forces that were guarding the facility only managed to slow their progress a bit, his operatives could handle them even without his input, so most of his brain power was focused on things that Ethereals said.

Many of their statements were intriguing or even enlightening. And he just **loved** trying to determine people's true intentions from heir outward actions and words.

Bradford was occasionally updating him on status of the rebellion, and from the way he phrased some of his reports, this op may very well decide the outcome of it all, _not that it was any different before_.

"We have lost nothing. For our greatest weapon returns to us"- yet again the female Ethereal made allusion to his potential role in the subjugation of humanity, this was one of the things he categorized as "enlightening".

"You will defeat them here, as you did one before, Commander" other Ethereal added. And that was one of the "intriguing" group.

 _"Huh"_ , Commander chuckled, even the Aliens insisted on calling him by the rank. In the original XCOM his name and many other things were classified, majority of staff did not even see his face and while Council Spokesman, Bradford, Shen and Vahlen had the clearance to know both, they still used "Commander" to address him, like the rest of organization. 20 years later all the data on him was lost, while ex-Spokesman and Bradford continued to use rank out of habit, he himself found it oddly fitting.

But the same could not be applied to the Ethereals, after all they had direct access to his mind, surely, they took every bit of information that was there, including his name and personality.

Well, if what Ethereals have said so far about him was true, and Tygan's research into the control chip and his own analysis of the Invasion of 2015 were supporting Ethereals' words, he was as much of 'the Commander' for them as he was for the XCOM.

After all, how else would you call a person who was doing nothing, but analyzing tactical data for you for 20 years straight? Who knows, he may have won every major engagement during the conquest of 'The Old World' for them. That would at least explain why those high and mighty Elders were _trying to coax and persuade him_ to "return to them" even promising to "spare this world", _spare whatever would be left after you processed millions of people into the raw material for your new bodies, you mean?_

It's not that he was **completely** against working with the aliens, his long experience as an intelligence officer made him quite used to performing background "deals with devils" and it was crystal clear that humanity was bound to be changed and the Old World Order was bound to be dismantled the moment Ethereals spotted Earth. Those **violent, aggressive** abductions and absolute **ruthlessness** when perfoming the abductions were the reason Council activated the XCOM in the first place. Hell, he could have even forgiven them all of those abduction runs and experiments that have surely followed, only if that could avert the all-out war against such a superior enemy. But aliens decided to talk only after they bombed old XCOM HQ as well as several major military installations into the oblivion and turned him into some sort of mindless tactical assistant for their own officers. And now they were turning millions of people into some yellowish goo in their quest for immortality.

As Commander once again started musing about aliens' goals and their complete disregard to life in achieving those goals, his squad approached the hall of some kind, with a huge statue of ethereal at the end of it.

As they reached the statue Ethereal's voice came again: "Your form is but a shadow of our truth. We seek to defy that which would consume us all. Your efforts deny the sacrifices of those who came before. You leave us no choice. We will force you to see!"

As soon as the voice faded, three avatars and dozens of gatekeepers and codexes teleported amidst the hallway. All three Avatars were meter away from Commander's one while rest of their bodyguards tried to separate them from XCOM operatives.

Commander didn't even have the time to react before he found himself being overwhelmed by the combined psionic might of 3 Elders…

* * *

Time stopped around them. Only fraction of a second has passed between the teleportation and him being attacked but Commander could see that all of his loyal operatives have already reacted and were stuck turning their weapons towards their enemies, no doubt they have already evaluated what targets needed to be removed first, in order to insure highest chances of him surviving. They all reacted, and he was caught off guard, despite the difference between Avatar's higher perception even if compared with XCOM elites' lightning-fast reactions. That was the difference between trained operative and amped-up, genetically enhanced non-combatant, difference that he **himself** used against the aliens and still, he was caught off guard.

Now, he could only stare and feel how Elders were crushing his mental barriers through the psionic link between his Avatar and true body, enveloping his consciousness.

" **We will force you to see** " voices boomed in Commander's head.

Suddenly, thousands of images passed directly into his consciousness, death, destruction and chaos, wherever he looked he could see only them.

Them and huge machines descending from the skies, burning buildings and smashing through hopelessly outmatched defenders. Defenders, that suspiciously looked like more muscular version of Ethereals.

As soon as he thought this, voices boomed once again: **"Our home was the one of the oldest worlds, and one of the first to be consumed. Billions were lost, if only that were the end…"**

More images were pushed into his mind, different cities, different species, some more advanced some less advanced, all being destroyed, few survivors are modified to be used as mindless slaves or processed into the building material for new machines.

 _Not much different from yourselves,_ Commander remarked.

 **"We had little choice"** \- voices answered, and he saw Ethereals, two Cycles after their Homeworld was destroyed, only hundreds of them left, their bodies and psionic powers declining from millennia of warfare. " **O** **ur small numbers forced us to adopt enemy's tactics, to a certain degree and to uplift the younger species to fight in our stead, but that was still not enough."** He saw armies of Vipers, Mutons and Andromedons, supported by swarms of cyberdisks, floaters and chryssalids engaging the Machines and their servants, fighting bitterly for every city and planet only to be crushed too, with few remnants being saved in exchange for servitude to the Ethereals.

 **"Elders decided not to interfere with the next Cycles, not until we could find species that would allow us to increase the only edge we still have over the Destroyers"** He saw Sectoids and octopus-like aliens that resembled Gatekeepers.

 _Psionics?_

" **Yes, but even after our efforts to boost their abilities, they failed to meet our requirements"** he saw several Sectoid Commanders and what looked like a cruder version of Gatekeepers attempting to use a psionic attack on the lone Ethereal, only to be effortlessly pushed back. Then, he saw Ethereal ships leaving sectoids' Homeworld, taking only few servants and enough genetic material to be used for cloning and modification and then destroying the planet with psionically created black hole, in order to deny the Reapers any psionic potential.

 **"You are or greatest organic adversary. You are our Avatar. You can lead our armies, save your world and other young ones who have risen in this Cycle. Return to us, there can be no more delay, the Cycle is nearing its end"** The voices offered.

Commander considered his options:

1) He could resist, try to disrupt whatever psionic stasis Elders put him into and then attempt to destroy these tree avatars in front of him and any more avatars located within this facility (30% success chance). If he succeeds in doing so, he would need to take command over the ragtag, under-armed, unequipped and untrained army of rebels in their attempt to overthrow vastly numerically and technologically superior enemy (5% success chance), should humanity win this one and not be destroyed by all the fighting it would take and whatever artificial black hole bullshit the Elders could pull out, they would have to prepare to take on the power that even Ethereals in the apex of their strength could not beat(1% success chance.)

2) He could comply and become the biggest traitor in history of mankind, dooming millions of people being killed while quelling the revolt he himself caused and millions more being turned into the raw material for Ethereals' new bodies, but he would secure the continued existence of humanity as a species, not the whole of it, not in form that he would like it to be, but from what he saw, he was sure that Ethereals were good in preserving themselves and their assets from complete destruction by the Reapers.

In the end, there was no choice, they were not prepared.

" _Fine, I'm returning_ ".


End file.
